Special Issue: A good Start

This issue of REF triquarterly news puts a special focus on A Good Start, REF’s flagship program for early child education and care. In 2011, A Good Start (AGS) continued its progress towards ensuring that children from ages zero to six have access to early childhood education and care services in 16 locations across four countries (Hungary, Macedonia, Romania,and Slovakia). The country-specific implementation that AGS has and continues to present unique challenges in each country and each locality. The long-term outcome is highly influenced by the commitment and involvement of the local stakeholders. Comparing the objectives and targets set at the beginning of the project with the current status, main trends that have developed during the implementation of AGS can be identified: 1. Recurring beneficiary children are defined as those children involved repeatedly by the local partners and REF. 2. AGS is successfully getting children into kindergarten. 3. In three countries (Macedonia, Romania, and Slovakia) out of the four AGS countries, kindergarten facilities do not have enough capacity; 4. Due to the limited financial resources and the complexity of the local challenges, after one year of implementation, REF decided to invest additional funds to ensure a more complex and quality ECD project for participating Romani communities. 5. Working with parents on parental skills, involving and motivating them, providing the necessary information through home visits, community events, early literacy programs. 6. In many cases it was and it is still difficult to overcome prejudice. 7. During implementation, some issues arose with a few local partners, which lead to alterations from the details of the original project design.